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Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations. View or edit your browsing history. Get to Know Us. Would you like to report this content as inappropriate? Do you believe that this item violates a copyright? An example of this choice and its implications can be drawn from translating a Hungarian ST into English.
We choose Hungarian because it is unfamiliar to most readers, and therefore capable of giving a genuinely exotic impression. Waking on the first morning of the holiday, the children are disappointed to find that it is raining heavily. Their mother comforts them with a proverb, suggesting that it will soon clear up: The only possible advantage of the literal translation is its exoticism, but this advantage is cancelled by two things: If there were good reasons for preserving the exoticism, one could mitigate these disadvantages by obliquely signalling in the TT that the mother is using what is, for TL readers, an exotic proverb: You know the saying: Which solution is deemed best will naturally depend on contextual factors outside the scope of this example.
Nevertheless, the example illustrates very well the alternatives in cultural transposition, including the one we have yet to discuss, namely calque. In essence, then, calque is a form of literal translation. A bad calque imitates ST structure to the point of being ungrammatical in the TL; a good calque manages to compromise between imitating a ST structure and not offending against the grammar of the TL.
Calquing may also be seen as a form of cultural borrowing, although, instead of verbatim borrowing of expressions, only the model of SL grammatical structures is borrowed. Like cultural borrowing proper, and for similar reasons, translation by creating calques does occur in practice. Furthermore, as also happens with cultural borrowing proper, some originally calqued expressions become standard TL cultural equivalents of their SL originals.
Clearly, there are certain dangers in using calque as a translation device. The major one is that the meaning of calqued phrases may not be clear in the TT. In the worst cases, calques are not even recognizable for what they are, but are merely puzzling bits of gibberish for the reader or listener. But, of course, it is not sufficient for the TT to make it clear that a particular phrase is an intentional calque.
The meaning of the calqued phrase must also be transparent in the TT context. The most successful calques need no explanation; less successful ones may need to be explained, perhaps in a footnote or a glossary. Like all forms of cross-cultural borrowing, calque exhibits a certain degree of exoticism, bringing into the TT a flavour of the cultural foreignness and strangeness of the source culture.
Consequently, it should generally be avoided in texts where exoticism is strategically inappropriate, such as an instruction manual, whose prime function is to give clear and explicit information. In any text, one should also definitely avoid unintentional calquing resulting from too slavish a simulation of the grammatical structures of the ST.
These examples are from a Colombian tourist brochure. In brief summary of the discussion so far: Where standard communicative equivalents are lacking, and also a particular ST concept is alien to the target culture, preference should be given to cultural borrowing, unless there are particular reasons against it.
The emphasis in the preceding paragraph on solutions being preferable unless certain conditions militate against them draws attention to the need to balance one set of considerations against another. This is, indeed, a general feature of the translation process, and remarking on it in the context of a choice between literal translation, communicative translation, cultural transplantation and so on brings us to a discussion of compromises made necessary by this feature. Often one allows these losses unhesitatingly. These are just two examples of the many kinds of compromise translators make every day.
Compromises should be the result of deliberate decisions taken in the light not only of what latitudes are allowed by the SL and TL respectively, but also of all the factors that can play a determining role in translation: Only then can the translator have a firm grasp of which aspects of the ST can be sacrificed with the least detriment to the effectiveness of the TT, both as a rendering of the ST and as a TL text in its own right.
Much of the material in this book will in fact draw attention, in both principle and practice, to the different kinds of compromise suggested—perhaps even dictated—by different types of text. The issue of undesirable, yet inevitable, translation losses raises a special problem for the translator. The problem consists in knowing that the loss of certain features sacrificed in translation does have detrimental effects on the quality of the TT, but seeing no way of avoiding these unacceptable compromises.
It is when faced with apparently inevitable, yet unacceptable, compromises that translators may feel the need to resort to techniques referred to as compensation—that is, techniques of making up for the loss of important ST features through replicating ST effects approximately in the TT by means other than those used in the ST. For methodological purposes it is useful to distinguish four different aspects of compensation while remembering that these aspects frequently occur together. Compensation in kind The first aspect we shall call compensation in kind. This refers to making up for one type of textual effect in the ST by another type in the TT.
The contrast in Spanish between masculine and feminine forms of the definite article is one that frequently causes problems. The definite article in English does not permit the expressive power that a Spanish ST may derive from the contrast between feminine and masculine gender. Compensation in kind can be further illustrated by three of its most typical forms. First, explicit meanings in the ST may be compensated for by implicit meanings in the TT. Machado, b Second, connotative meanings in the ST may be compensated for by literal meanings in the TT.
This type of compensation can be illustrated by comparing two translations of another extract from Machado poem LX. Has the noria of my thought run dry… Machado, , p. Third, where, for example, the humour of the ST hinges on the comic use of calque, the TT may have to derive its humour from other sources, such as a play on words. Compensation in place Compensation in place consists in making up for the loss of a particular effect found at a given place in the ST by creating a corresponding effect at an earlier or later place in the TT.
This example illustrates the relationship between grammatical transposition—the reorganization of a ST grammatical structure into a different, more idiomatic, structure in the TT—and the notion of compensation in place: Compensation in place is frequently a necessary device in translating verse.
Tanto tren con tu cueppo, tanto tren; tanto tren con tu boca, tanto tren; tanto tren con tu sojo, tanto tren. This phonetic reinforcement cannot be precisely, and equally intensively, replicated in an English TT because the key words do not alliterate in the required ways. The Cultural issues in translation 31 following TT attempts at least partly to compensate for this by using phonetic reinforcement distributed in different places from where it occurs in the ST: An accurate literal translation of this phrase might be produced by translating word for word; but the resulting TT phrase would be far too long-winded and ponderous to be suitable in most contexts, and certainly out of place in a colloquial one.
Compensation by splitting Compensation by splitting may be resorted to, if the context allows, where there is no single TL word that covers the same range of meaning as a given ST word. As well as illustrating compensation by splitting, this rendering is also an example of compensation in kind: We will not pursue this any further, because what is involved is the question of literal versus connotative meaning, and these questions are not addressed until Chapters 7 and 8.
Suffice it to say that the TT exhibits the substitution of literal meaning for connotative meaning. The four types of compensation discussed above can, of course, take many different forms; and, as our last example indicates, it also often happens that a single case of compensation belongs to more than one category at the same time. Good examples of multiple compensation will be found in the texts set for analysis in Practical 3.
We conclude with a word of caution: The aim is to reduce some of the more serious and undesirable translation losses that necessarily result from the fundamental structural and cultural differences between SL and TL. Cultural issues in translation Text 33 34 Thinking Spanish translation turn to p.
Give your own version where you can improve on the published TT. It is the first volume in a trilogy of works which experiment with narrative technique. In this volume the protagonist reflects on his own identity and experience. He has lived the life of a political and cultural exile. Seix Barral, , pp. Contextual information The text is an official information leaflet explaining arrangements for postal votes in the local elections. Cultural issues in translation Text 41 4 The formal properties of texts: There are, doubtless, insurmountable problems in establishing objectively what the ostensible properties of a text are, but it can at least be said that whatever effects, meanings and reactions are triggered by a text must originate from features concretely present in it.
It is, therefore, necessary for the translator to look at the text as a linguistic object. There is no need for a detailed incursion into linguistic theory, but linguistics does offer a hierarchically ordered series of systematically isolated and complementary levels on which the formal properties of texts can be located for the purposes of a methodical discussion. It is true of any text that there are various points on which it could have been different.
All these points of detail, no matter how large or small, where a text could have been different that is, where it could have been another text are designated as textual variables. It is these textual variables that the series of levels defined in linguistics makes it possible to identify.
First, looking at textual variables on an organized series of isolated levels enables one to see which textual variables are important in the ST and which are less important. As we have seen, some of the ST features that fall prey to translation loss may not be worth the effort of compensation. It is, therefore, excellent strategy to decide which of the textual variables are indispensable, and which can be ignored, for the purpose of formulating a good TT.
In general, as we shall see, the more prominently a particular textual variable contributes to triggering effects and meanings in a text, and the more it coincides in this with other textual variables conveying related meanings and effects, the more important it is. This enables the translator to identify what textual variables of the ST are absent from the TT, and vice versa. That is, although translation loss is by definition not ultimately quantifiable, it is possible to make a relatively precise accounting of translation losses on each level.
This also permits a more self-aware and methodical way of evaluating TTs and of reducing details of translation loss. We propose six levels of textual variables, hierarchically arranged from lowest to highest; hierarchically in the sense that each level is, as it were, built on top of the previous one. Naturally, other schemes could have been offered, but arguing about alternative theoretical frameworks is beyond the scope of this coursebook, as it would involve a deeper plunge into linguistic theory than is useful for our purposes. In this chapter and the next two, we shall work our way up through the levels, showing what kinds of textual variable can be found on each, and how they may function in a text.
Surprising as it may seem at this early stage, this method does not imply a plodding or piecemeal approach to texts: A schematic representation of all the filters we are suggesting can be found on p. Taking a text on this level means looking at it as a sequence of sound segments phonemes if it is an oral text, or as a sequence of letters graphemes if it is a written one. Although phonemes and graphemes are different things, they are on the same basic level of textual variables: This always and automatically constitutes a source of translation loss. The real question for the translator, however, is whether this loss matters at all.
Could we not simply put it down as a necessary consequence of the transition from one language to another, and forget about it? The transcription of names is a prime example. This transliteration in fact occasions a phonic distortion from Chinese [mawdzdu? The simplest example of such special effects is onomatopoeia. If it has a thematically important function, onomatopoeia may require care in translation.
What is more, many SL onomatopoeic words do not have one-to-one TL counterparts. In these and many other cases the range of reference of the SL word does not coincide exactly with that of its nearest TL counterpart. These types of crosscultural difference are phonic in nature, and are in themselves potential sources of translation problems. Onomatopoeia may cause more of a translation problem where the nearest semantic counterparts to an onomatopoeic SL word in the TL are not onomatopoeic.
To the extent that the very fact of onomatopoeia is an effect contributing to textual meaning, its loss in the TT is a translation loss that the translator may have reason to regret. Some onomatopoeic words can be used not only as interjections, but also as nouns or verbs: The example typifies a common translation problem: Even something as simple as onomatopoeia, then, may need attention in translating.
For example, the more obviously a pun or a spoonerism is not accidental or incidental in the ST, the more it is in need of translating. A major strategic decision will then be whether to seek appropriate puns or spoonerisms for the TT, or whether to resort to some form of compensation. Typical problems of this kind will be found in Practicals 4 and 8. Every time this root recurs in the text, it coincides with a vital moment in the narrative, so that it very soon acquires emphatic force, underlining crucial narrative and thematic points.
The important thing to keep in mind is that, onomatopoeia aside, the sound-symbolic effect of words is not intrinsic to them, but operates in conjunction with their literal and connotative meanings in the context. For example, persistent repetition of the sound [1] does not, in and of itself, suggest a sudden burst of spiritual illumination, or a flood of bright daylight, or a cacophony of voices instrumental in ridiculing petty officialdom.
El alma vuelve al cuerpo, Se dirige a los ojos Y choca. La ley levanta Frente al oficial cacumen 48 Thinking Spanish translation La sacrosanta Letra que todos consumen. We shall discuss connotative meaning as such in Chapter 8. In the last of these examples, sound symbolism clearly has such an important textual role that to translate the texts without some attempt at producing appropriate sound-symbolic effects in the TT would be to incur severe translation loss.
Apart from alliteration and assonance, rhyme is the most obvious example. When such recurrences are organized into recognizable patterns on a large scale, for example in a regularly repeated rhyme scheme, they are clearly not accidental or incidental. However, this does not mean that one is obliged, or even well advised, to reproduce the exact patterns of recurrence found in the ST. In fact, opinions are divided among translators of verse about the extent to which even such obvious devices as rhyme scheme should be reproduced in the TT.
In English, for example, blank verse is a widespread genre with at least as high a prestige as rhyming verse, so that there is often a case for translating rhyming STs from other languages into blank verse in English. We shall consider at length the importance of genre as a factor in translation in Chapter There is, however, a style of translation that actually more or less reverses the maxim quoted from Lewis Carroll; that is, it concentrates on taking care of the sounds and allows the sense to emerge as a kind of vaguely suggested impression.
This technique is generally known as phonemic translation. Here is part of one poem, followed by i the phonemic translation and ii a literal prose translation: We shall not dwell on this example, beyond saying that it perfectly illustrates the technique of phonemic translation: As a matter of fact, it is difficult if not impossible, for a TT to retain a close similarity to the actual phonic sequences of the ST and still retain anything more than a tenuous connection with any kind of coherenl meaning, let alone the meaning of the ST. What we have here is a form of humorous pastiche which consists in the cross-linguistic phonic imitation of a well-known text.
Although phonemic translation cannot be recommended as a technique for serious translation of sensible texts, there are texts that are not intended to be sensible in the original and which qualify as suitable objects for a degree of phonemic translation. Finally, though they are less common than sound symbolism, special effects may also be contrived through the spatial layout of written texts.
Such cases illustrate the potential importance of specifically graphic textual variables. An obvious example is the acrostic, a text in which, say, reading the first letter of each line spells out, vertically, a hidden word. Another is concrete poetry, where the visual form of the text is used to convey meaning. The text in Practical 4, from the same source, is also a good example; just as onomatopoeia is iconic phonically, this text—like much concrete poetry—is iconic graphically, imitating visually what it describes referentially.
Groups of syllables may, on this level, form contrastive prosodic patterns for example, the alternation of a short, staccato, fast section with a long, slow, smooth one , or recurrent ones, or both. In texts not designed to be read aloud, such prosodic patterns, if they are discernible at all, are relatively unlikely to have any textual importance.
However, in texts intended for oral performance or intended to evoke oral performance , such as plays, speeches, poetry or songs, prosodic features can have a considerable 52 Thinking Spanish translation theme-reinforcing and mood-creating function. In texts where prosodic special effects play a vital role, the translator may have to pay special attention to the prosodic level of the TT. In most cases, it is not possible to construct a TT that both sounds natural in the TL and reproduces in exact detail the metric structure of the ST.
In this respect translating from Spanish to English, or vice versa, can be quite problematic, since the prosodic structures of the two languages are substantially different. In English, patterns of accent are distributed idiosyncratically over the syllables of words, with each polysyllabic word having one maximally prominent, and a number of less prominent, syllables in a certain configuration: Only by knowing the word can one be sure what its prosodic pattern is; that is, accent patterns in a group of words are tied to the identity of the individual words.
This is known as free wordaccent. In effect, this means that free word-accent applies to both Spanish and English with the proviso that penultimate syllable stress predominates in Spanish and is regarded as the norm. These differences between the English and Spanish prosodic systems may in themselves sometimes give rise to translation problems in prose and verse alike.
They are not, however, the main source of metrical difficulties in verse translation: The same is true on the prosodic level. The difference between Spanish and English versification constitutes a major problem in verse translation. We shall deal here in elementary terms with the basics of the two systems, so that they can be compared.
Such metrical structure is the main feature of the patterned use of recurrences on the prosodic level. It does not, however, exhaust the entire field of prosody, since it ignores tempo and melodic pitch, which may also constitute vital textual variables in an oral text. We shall not discuss free verse, which would need too detailed a study for the purposes of this course. In translating verse, one strategic decision that needs to be made is on the prosodic level: This decision will depend ultimately on the textual function of metre in the ST, and on whether creating metric recurrences in the TT would lead to unacceptable translation losses on other levels.
For English, there is a well-tried system, which we adopt here. For Spanish, we suggest a simple notation below. The notation brings out clearly and concisely the metric patterns, and the variations in them, which are so fertile a source of special textual effects. Only when these patterns have been identified in a ST, and their effects pinpointed, can the translator begin to face the decision as to what—if any—TL prosodic patterns might be appropriate in the TT. That there will need to be prosodic patterns in the translation of a prosodically patterned ST is virtually certain; that they will hardly ever replicate those of the ST is even more certain.
The challenge to the translator is to find appropriate compromises. Spanish Spanish verse is syllabic. That is, the writer does not have to choose among conventional configurations of stressed and unstressed syllables, as is the case in traditional English or German verse. A line of verse in Spanish is defined in terms of the number of syllables it contains, and the pattern of stresses may vary greatly within that framework.
However, syllable counting is not an entirely straightforward matter. When working out the syllabic pattern of Spanish verse, a particular difficulty arises from the fact that elision may, but does not necessarily, occur between a word ending in a vowel and a following word which begins with a vowel or a silent h. Normal practice is to use the symbolpto indicate elision, as here: It is useful to think of Spanish verse forms as being of two basic types: Those with nine or more syllables often have a mid-line pause.
The metric structure of a line of Spanish verse can be worked out and notated through a combination of syllable counting and registering groups of stressed and unstressed syllables separated by junctures marked by a pause. These structures are, of course, not intended to lay down a rigid and immutable rule of scansion; they merely suggest and represent plausible oral readings of the lines concerned.
For practical purposes, the following simple system is an adequate way of notating metric structure in Spanish verse: In this notation, the following symbols are used: In modern Spanish verse, assonance and full rhyme are equally likely to appear and are of equal value. The most common verse forms are: This line is a pentameter: Each of the feet in this case is made up of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. A foot of this type is an iamb, represented as A line consisting of five iambic feet is an iambic pentameter.
It is the most common English line, found in the work of great playwrights and poets like Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth. A line consisting of three iambs is an iambic trimeter; one consisting of four iambs is an iambic tetrameter; one consisting of six iambs is an iambic hexameter. The shorter lines are more usual than the pentameter in songs, ballads and light verse. Besides the iamb, the commonest other types of feet are: Naturally, following a single rhythmic pattern without variation would quickly become tedious.
One other sort of English metre is worth mentioning, strong-stress metre. This is different from the syllable-and-stress metre described above. Only the stresses count in the scanning, the number of weak syllables being variable. Much modern verse uses this metre, most frequently with four stresses in a line, often in combination with syllable-and-stress metre. NB Exact metrical analysis and scansion in English and in Spanish are a far more complex and subtle issue than the simple notations we have given here.
However, for the purposes of an introduction to translation methodology, only three things are required: Arenas Santiago de Chile: In the light of your findings in i , translate the text with due attention to graphic detail. Explain the main decisions of detail you made in producing your TT. Rozas and published in , an anthology which also contains other poems experimenting with the iconic relationship between graphic form and poetic content. In common with other graphic poems by Guillermo de Torre, the key to this iconic relationship in the extract below is given by the title. Translate the text into English.
The novel is noted for its ludic qualities. It is useful to divide the contents of this level into two areas: A great deal of the explicit literal meaning of a text is carried by the configuration of words and phrases. To interpret any text it is necessary—but, of course, not sufficient—to construe the literal meaning conveyed by its grammatical structures.
Literal meaning as such will be discussed in Chapter 7. Furthermore, a TT has normally to be constructed by putting words into meaningful grammatical configurations according to the conventions and structures of the TL, and using the lexical means available in the TL. Consequently, translators can never ignore the level of grammatical variables in either the ST or the TT. Let us look at the question of grammatical arrangement first. It is important to remember that these structural patterns differ from language to language. Even where apparent cross-linguistic similarities occur, they are often 62 Thinking Spanish translation misleading, the structural equivalent of faux amis.
The following pairs illustrate this point: The distinction between these two alternatives illustrates a characteristic difference between English and Spanish. These differences in grammatical tendencies imply that, in translating from Spanish to English, there is a frequent need for grammatical transposition see p. In a normal predicative phrase in Chinese, Grammar and lexis in translation 63 there are three particularly troublesome grammatical features.
First, neither subject nor object need be explicitly singular or plural. Second, there is no definite or indefinite article for either subject or object. Third, there may be no indication of a tense or mood for the predicate. Wherever the grammatical structures of the ST cannot be matched by analogous structures in the TT, the translator is faced with the prospect of major translation losses.
The problems that may be caused by this are not necessarily serious, but they are complex and many, which means that we can only touch on them briefly here. Such problems are illustrated in more detail in Chapters 16— The need for circumlocution in a TT is one of the commonest of these problems.
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This is an obvious case of translation loss, a neat and compact piece of ST corresponding to a relatively complex and long-winded TT. What may be less obvious is that the converse case of rendering a complex ST word by a simple word in the TT, or a complex ST phrase by a single word, is just as much a translation loss, because the grammatical proportions of the ST are not adhered to in the TT. These examples show how, as a rule, semantic considerations override considerations of grammatical translation loss, priority being given almost automatically to the mot juste and to constructing grammatically well-formed, idiomatic TL sentences.
Take, for example, this opening sentence from a business letter in English: We acknowledge receipt of your letter of 6 April. Acusamos recibo de su carta con fecha de seis de abril. As this example shows, a great deal depends on nuances within the particular TL genre, an issue to which we shall return in Chapters 11— Grammatical structure may assume particular importance in literary translation. The following version is just such a failure: Grammar and lexis in translation 65 But, apart from being somewhat bohemian, Lopez was an excellent colleague.
He was always ready to recognize that it was Dr Restelli who should deliver the Ninth of July speeches. A more stylistically apt TT would need to be syntactically fairly complex and elaborate. Here, for discussion in class, is the Kerrigan translation: But apart from being somewhat bohemian, Lopez was an excellent colleague, always ready to recognize that it was Dr Restelli who should deliver the Ninth of July speeches. There is another reason why translators must keep a close eye on grammatical structure: To translate this rhyme into another language, one would have to give careful consideration to the grammatical patterning as schematized above, because the loss of its effects would deprive the text of much of its point; in effect, the structural scheme would be the basis for formulating a TT.
Much less blatantly playful texts, such as rhetorical speeches, may make similar use of devices based on syntactic patterns of contrast and recurrence. In such cases, it would be a serious textual error not to recognize the stylistic importance of these grammatical devices, and a potentially serious translation loss not to try to reconstruct them in the TT.
WORDS For reasons of educational bias for instance, the paramount use that students make of dictionaries and lexically arranged encyclopedias , people are far more directly aware of individual words than of other units and structures of language. Yet meanings are certainly not exclusively concentrated in words individually listed in isolation in dictionaries. Any text shows that the combination of words and their use in contexts creates meanings that they do not possess in isolation, and even meanings that are not wholly predictable from the literal senses of the words combined. As our multi-level approach to textual variables indicates, lexical translation losses such as want of an exact translation for a particular word are just one kind of translation loss among many.
There is no a priori reason, as long as the overall sense of the ST is successfully conveyed by the TT, why they should be given a heavier weighting than other kinds of translation loss. In fact, as we saw in Chapter 3, communicative translation is often more important than word-for-word correspondences. Lexical translation losses, then, are no more avoidable than other kinds of translation loss. Exact synonymy between SL and TL words is the exception rather than the rule, and problems arising from this should be neither maximized nor minimized, but treated on a par with other translation losses that affect the overall meaning of the TT.
The translation problems arising from particularization and generalization are very common, and we shall return to them in Chapter 7. The exact associative overtones of words in the overall context of a ST are often difficult enough to pinpoint, but it is even more difficult, if not impossible, to find TL words that will, over and above conveying an appropriate literal meaning, also produce exactly the right associative overtones in the context of the TT. This is another source of lexical translation loss, and another potential dilemma between choosing literal meaning at the expense of associative overtones, or vice versa.
We shall return to these questions in Chapter 8. Series of words can be distributed in contrastive and recurrent patterns that signal or reinforce the thematic development of the text. In Aphek and Tobin , the term word system is used to denote this phenomenon. Aphek and Tobin illustrate their concept of theme-reinforcing word systems from texts in Hebrew. In Hebrew, words consist of consonantal roots with variable vocalic fillers. All words with the same consonantal root 68 Thinking Spanish translation are perceived in Hebrew as belonging to a single associative set.
This is mainly because of the system of writing, in which vocalic fillers may be omitted. A Jewish pedlar makes his rounds me XaZeR al ptaxim in villages. He meets a gentile woman and he bows before her repeatedly XoZeRet vehishtaxava. The man begins to court meXaZeR the woman and becomes her lover. He forgets to live according to Jewish customs for example, he eats pork.
Eventually it transpires that the woman is a vampire, and, in a climactic argument, she laughs at the pedlar and calls him a pig XaZiR. On returning XoZeR to the house, he finds that the woman has stabbed herself with his knife. It also highlights the important thematic points in the interplay between abandoning Jewish religious observance, eating pork, being a metaphorical pig in the eyes of the vampire woman, and eventual repentance.
This example shows that it is worth scanning certain types of text for theme-reinforcing word systems such as a series of thematic key-words, or phonetic patterns, or an extended metaphor , because such things may be important textual devices. The novel deals thematically with the debt of Spanish to Arabic culture.
The novel has achieved great critical acclaim on account of its innovative narrative strategies. The plot describes the events which surround a young medical researcher who inadvertently becomes involved in an illegal abortion. These levels, which are successively higher in the hierarchy of levels outlined in Chapter 4, will complete our discussion of textual variables. Words and phrases are mere abstractions from sentences, abstractions stripped of practical communicative purpose, intonation and of other features that make sentences genuine vehicles of linguistic utterance.
For the nature of the textual variables on the sentential level to be grasped, a distinction must be drawn between spoken and written texts, since spoken languages and written languages differ sharply on this level. As we know, a number of different sentences, marked for different purposes, can be created purely through intonation: Similar effects can be achieved by a combination of intonation and other features with a sentential function: The breakdown of a spoken text to its constituent sentences, as indicated by intonation contours, can be vitally important in determining its impact in terms of practical communication.
Please pass the salt. A lot of these refinements tend to disappear in written texts as a result of the relatively impoverished sentential level in writing systems. Notably, the only ways of conveying intonation in writing are punctuation and typography, which offer far fewer alternatives than the rich nuances of speech. In translating both oral and written texts, then, the sentential level of language demands particular care, so that important nuances of meaning are not missed. Fortunately, sequential focus and illocutionary particles can be represented in written texts, but they are often problematic all the same.
Languages vary significantly in the sentence-marking features they possess and the way they use them. The variety and frequency of illocutionary particles in English are relatively low when compared to German, but significantly higher than in Spanish. Because there is a dearth of such particles in Spanish, it is Spanish-speaking students of English rather than English-speaking students of Spanish who experience the greater learning difficulties in the area of the usage of sentential tags and the like.
Problems of translation are also more acute in translating from English to Spanish. In general, because the frequency of illocutionary particles is higher in English than in Spanish, an English TT that contains significantly fewer such particles than the corresponding Spanish ST tends to lack Sentence, discourse and intertext 75 idiomaticity, and might even come across as foreign-sounding. Translators from Spanish into English should, therefore, try to remember the option of rendering the illocutionary impact of Spanish ST sentences by the use of illocutionary particles in the TT.
In translating written TTs, it should also be remembered that there are differences between English and Spanish punctuation, for instance in the use of colons and semi-colons. Sentence markers are capable of self-conscious, patterned uses as devices contributing to the thematic development of the overall text in which they are distributed. Or a philosophical argument may be constructed by the regular textual alternation of question and answer. In less obvious cases than these, the progression of a textual theme may be supported or underlined by a patterned progression between sentence types.
This can be an effective dramatic device in an introspective monologue or soliloquy. The high incidence of rhetorical questions emphasizes this approach and underlines one of the central themes of Del sentimiento: Creo en el inmortal origen de este anhelo de inmortalidad, que es la sustancia misma de mi alma. In such cases it is more or less incumbent on the translator to use appropriate sentential features of the TL as devices enhancing the theme in the TT.
Not to do so would be to court unacceptable translation loss. The textual variables considered here are the features that distinguish a cohesive and coherent textual flow from a random sequence of unrelated sentences. This level is concerned both with relations between sentences and with relations between larger units: Compare, for instance, these two texts: I was getting hungry. I knew the kitchen was on the ground floor.
I was pretty sure that the kitchen must be on the ground floor. I made myself a sandwich. So I went downstairs. Well…I knew the kitchen was on the ground floor. I mean, I was pretty sure it must be there. Anyway, I made myself a sandwich. The first text is so devoid of inter-sentential connectives that, if it hangs together at all—that is, if it is cogent at all—this is only thanks to the underlying chronological narrative structure.
The place of these markers is in individual sentences, but their function would seem to be outside them: As for the larger units of texts mentioned earlier, there are, in written texts at least, some very obvious textual variables whose function is to link parts of a text into clearly recognizable units, and to indicate something about how they are Sentence, discourse and intertext 77 interrelated.
Devices like titles, paragraphs, sub-headings, cross-references and so on are typical examples. While such devices may often cause no problems in translating, they may on occasion be subject to cross-cultural differences we have already seen examples of this in Practical 3. Cogency The degree to which a text hangs together is known as its cogency. The considerable recent research into what it is that makes texts cogent suggests that there may be tacit, yet to some extent conventional, strategies and constraints that regulate cogency.
It also suggests that, in so far as they can be isolated, these strategies and constraints are specific to textual genres see especially Chapters 11 and 12 and vary from culture to culture.
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This would suggest that rational discourse itself is not a universal concept identical for all language-users in all communities, but a culturespecific and context-specific notion. Assuming this to be the case, translators must be aware of two things. First, the SL may have different standards of cogency from the TL. Second, what counts for normal, rational cogency in texts of a certain type in one culture may give the appearance of lack of cogency or excessive fussiness to members of another culture, so that a TT that reproduced point for point the discourse structure of the ST, and did not reorganize it in the light of the TL, might appear stilted, poorly organized or over-marked to a TL audience.
Consequently, an English TT that uses explicit connectives to reproduce all those found in a Spanish ST is likely to seem tediously over-marked in discourse structure, and therefore stilted, pedantic or patronizing. This piece of dialogue is a simple example: En efecto, pensaba en Picasso. I was thinking of Picasso. It was Picasso I had in mind. The decision will be heavily influenced by the genre of the ST and of the TT: As this example shows, one cannot lay down a rigid rule for translating connectives. Nevertheless, in the case of emphasis, one can say that written English readily uses italics where Spanish is more likely to use discourse connectives.
This difference between Spanish and English is observable even in quite formal written texts.
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Cohesion and coherence Halliday and Hasan make a useful distinction between two aspects of cogency in discourse: As the example of going down to the kitchen suggested, another common way of signalling explicit cohesion is to use grammatical anaphora. It is clear from that example that not using anaphora can make for an absurdly stilted, disjointed text. However, rules of anaphora differ from language to language. This implies that translators should follow the anaphoric norms of the TL, rather than slavishly reproducing ST anaphora.
Preserving the ST anaphora in such cases tends to be at the cost of producing unidiomatic calques. Coherence is a more difficult concept than cohesion, because it is, by definition, not explicitly marked in a text, but is rather a question of tacit thematic development running through the text. Coherence is best illustrated by contrast with cohesion. Here, first, is an example of a cohesive text units responsible for the explicit cohesion are italicized: The oneness of the human species does not demand the arbitrary reduction of diversity to unity; it only demands that it should be possible to pass from one particularity to another, and that no effort should be spared in order to Sentence, discourse and intertext 79 elaborate a common language in which each particularity can be adequately described.
If we systematically strip this text of all the units on which its explicitly marked cohesion rests, the resultant text, while no longer explicitly cohesive, remains nevertheless coherent in terms of its thematic development: The oneness of the human species does not demand the arbitrary reduction of diversity to unity. All that is necessary is that it should be possible to pass from one particularity to another.
No effort should be spared in order to elaborate a common language in which each individual experience can be adequately described. While coherence is clearly culture-specific in some respects, it may also vary significantly according to subject matter or textual genre. The coherence of a TT has, by and large, to be judged in TL terms, and must not be ignored by the translator. No text exists in total isolation from other texts. Even an extremely innovative text cannot fail to form part of an overall body of literature by which the impact and originality of individual texts are coloured and defined.
The inevitable relationship any text bears to its neighbours in the SL culture can cause translators notable problems. Such matching is, at best, approximate, and may sometimes be unattainable. The same is true, a fortiori, of STs that are predominantly original. Conversely, there seems to be no immediately identifiable counterpart to Don Quixote in English—certainly none that enjoys the same renown.
If the ST is stylistically innovative, it may be appropriate, where circumstances permit, to formulate a TT that is just as innovative in the SL. Alternatively, it may be necessary to allow the originality of the ST to be lost in translation, for example in the case of technical or scientific texts where the subject matter and thematic content outweigh considerations of style.
In such cases, translation cannot do full justice to the ST without trying to recreate the innovative nature of the ST. Whatever the text, these are all matters for strategic evaluation and decision by the translator. The translator must always be on the look-out for such echoes. What to do with them depends on the circumstances. Some cases will simply necessitate finding the appropriate TL passages and integrating them into the TT although, in the case of the Bible or ancient classics, thought will have to be given to which version to choose. In yet other cases, the echoes are too abstruse or unimportant from the point of view of a TL audience to be worth building into the TT.
We shall return to the problem of allusion, with further examples, on pp. Another significant mode of intertextuality is imitation. An entire text may be designed specifically as an imitation of another text or texts, as in pastiche or parody. Here the overall effect is of a text contrived as a mixture of styles that recall the various genres from which they are copied. This aspect of intertextuality has to be borne in mind, because there are STs that can only be fully appreciated if one is aware that they use the device of imitating other texts or genres.
Furthermore, to recreate this device in the TT, the translator must be familiar with target culture genres, and have the skill to imitate them. We shall return to this question in Chapter Translate the extract, paying special attention to its salient formal properties on the sentential and discourse levels. Unamuno — was an eminent scholar in Classical Studies and Comparative Philology with a prominent involvement in philosophy and in politics. Tal vez, pero quien no se cuida de la enfermedad, descuida la salud, y el hombre es un animal esencial y sustancialmente enfermo.
There is no element of gist translation in this assignment— the whole text needs to be translated as it stands. Between these two extremes lie many shades of shared conventional meaning intrinsic to the text because of its internal structure and explicit contents, and the relation these bear to the semantic conventions and tendencies of the SL in its ordinary, everyday usage.
In the case of words, it is this basic literal meaning that is given in dictionary definitions. This is because the intuitive understanding that native language-users have of the literal meanings of individual words does itself tend to be rather fluid.
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In addition, once words are put into different contexts, their literal meanings become even more flexible. These two facts make it infinitely difficult to pin down the precise literal meaning of any text of any complexity. This difficulty is still 84 Thinking Spanish translation further compounded by the fact that literal meanings supported by a consensus of semantic conventions are not the only types of meaning that can function in a text and nuance its interpretations.
As we shall see in Chapter 8, there are various connotative tendencies—not sufficiently cut and dried to qualify as conventional meanings accepted by consensus—which can play an important role in how a text is to be interpreted and translated. In what follows, we shall discuss ways of comparing degrees of correspondence in literal meaning between STs and TTs, and our discussion will presuppose the type of semantic equivalence defined here. We make one further basic supposition: The most useful way to visualize literal meanings is by thinking of them as circles, because in this way we can represent intersections between categories, and thus reflect overlaps in literal meaning between different expressions.
In exploring correspondence in literal meaning, it is particularly the intersections between categories that are significant; they provide, as it were, a measure of semantic equivalence. Comparisons of literal meaning made possible by considering overlaps between categories, and visualized as intersections between circles, are usually drawn between linguistic expressions in the same language. They allow, in the semantic description of a language, for an assessment of types and degrees of semantic correspondence between items for example, lexical items.
There is, however, no reason why analogous comparisons may not be made between expressions from two or more different languages, as a way of assessing and representing types and degrees of cross-linguistic semantic equivalence. Their two ranges of literal meaning, however, coincide perfectly. This can be visualized as moving the two circles on top of each other and finding that they cover one another exactly, as in Figure 7.
This exemplifies the strongest form of semantic equivalence: Just as alternative expressions in the same language may be full synonyms, so, in principle at least, there may be full synonymy across two different languages. It is at least possible that the Spanish phrase refers to a progressive event reported by the speaker.
There is a common element between the two phrases, but the Spanish one covers a wider range of situations, a range that is covered by at least two different expressions in English. This can be shown diagrammatically, as in Figure 7. Literal meaning and translation problems 87 Figure 7. This is seen diagrammatically in Figure 7. The expression with the wider, less specific, range of literal meaning is a hyperonym of the one with the narrower and more specific literal meaning.
Conversely, the narrower one is a hyponym of the wider one. Hyperonymy-hyponymy is so widespread in any given language that one can say that the entire fabric of linguistic reference is built up on such relationships. Take, for example, some of the alternative ways in which one can refer to an object— say, a particular biro. Literal meaning and translation problems 89 It is in the very essence of the richness of all languages that they offer a whole set of different expressions, each with a different range of inclusiveness, for designating any object, any situation, anything whatsoever.
The series can be visualized as a set of increasingly large concentric circles, larger circles representing hyperonyms, smaller one hyponyms, as in Figure 7. Therefore, the fact that both a hyperonym and a hyponym can serve for conveying a given message is of great importance to translation practice. In other words, a SL hyponym is unhesitatingly translated by a TL hyperonym as its nearest semantic equivalent, as shown in Figure 7.
Of course, contextual and situational clues will normally determine which of the alternatives is appropriate in a given TT. The point, however, is that each of the English phrases designates a different set of circumstances and has a literal meaning distinct from the other. Literal meaning and translation problems 91 Whichever alternative is chosen, the translator is rendering a SL hyperonym by a TL hyponym. This can be represented as shown in Figure 7. Indeed, choosing a hyperonym or hyponym even where a synonym does exist may actually be the mark of a good translation.